Look What's Happening In Egypt! Good News

This article was found at a new news site, Daily Source. Thanks Peter, for giving us a shout out about this very good site. We hardily recommend it to any of our readers who have the time to scout some of the news gatherers we like.

University Creates Student Oasis in Egypt's Desert

by Liane Hansen

Listen Now [6 min 30 sec] add to playlist

Enlarge

Davar Iran Ardalan, NPR

AUC Square, the entrance to American University in Cairo, links the institution to the city of New Cairo. The buildings are made of sandstone from quarries in Egypt. Intersecting arches appear throughout campus.

Enlarge

Davar Iran Ardalan, NPR

Near the entrance to the campus, architects built a dome modeled after the Great Mosque in Cordoba, Spain. The dome symbolizes the height of intellectual and mathematical achievement in Islamic civilization.

Enlarge

Davar Iran Ardalan, NPR

AUC features a series of small courtyards with balcony spaces and intricate wooden lattice work. The open spaces will not be air conditioned, but the ceilings and light shafts are open to the air and create a fresh ventilation system.

More in the Series

• April 6, 2008
  Climate Change's Impact on Egypt
• April 20, 2008
  Rising Sea Levels Threaten Egypt's Ancient Cities
• April 27, 2008
  In Cairo Slum, the Poor Spark Environmental Change
• May 4, 2008
  Slow but Sure Environmental Progress in Cairo

Enlarge

Davar Iran Ardalan, NPR

Architects visited medieval Cairo to get inspiration from traditional Egyptian and Islamic architecture. Offices buildings feature "mashrabiya," or wooden window screens, that provide privacy and protection from the sun.

Weekend Edition Sunday, May 11, 2008 · An hour away from the clogged heart of downtown Cairo, Egypt, a satellite city is springing up from the desert dust.

The city of New Cairo is the future home of the American University in Cairo, which is building a sprawling 260-acre campus to replace the current campus downtown. The project is bringing major residential and commercial development to what was once the middle of nowhere. And architects from around the world are using environmentally conscious designs to create an oasis for students.

AUC's $400 million campus, scheduled to open this summer, will accommodate more than 6,000 students, faculty and staff. University President David Arnold says the campus' new location will help relieve the overcrowding and pollution clogging Egypt's capital city. In turn, he says, New Cairo's population is expected to grow to 4 million people by 2020.

The school's new facility is located in a desert depression, which architects and designers have used to their advantage. Abdel Hamid Ibrahim Abdel Hamid, one of the project's chief architects, says planners placed buildings on the southern side of the valley, reserving the lowest levels for gardens and thereby creating a reservoir of cooler air. Buildings are oriented toward the prevailing northeast winds, and an array of fountains and greenery help cool the center of campus.

"Gardens … help condensate the cool air of the night and will ventilate the whole campus during the day," Abdel Hamid says.

Designers also kept Egypt's rich cultural heritage in mind as they planned the campus. About 80 percent of the walls on campus are made of locally mined sandstone. The material helps keep rooms cool during the day and warm at night, and should cut cooling and heating costs in half.

The school, a U.S.-accredited university, will have a main entrance that features an intricate series of arches and domes modeled after the Great Mosque in Cordoba, Spain. Abdel Hamid says the dome symbolizes the height of intellectual and mathematical achievement in the Islamic civilization. Architects left the core of the dome open to the sky, creating a vertical corridor of air.

Abdel Hamid says the scale of the campus was kept small — no building is more than five stories — because planners wanted to encourage socialization on the ground level. Some offices have balcony spaces and intricate lattice wood work overlooking the courtyard. "Mashrabiya," or traditional wooden window screens, provide privacy and protection from the sun.

For now, the biggest tasks that remain involve filling the university's library with books, the Olympic-size swimming pool with water, and getting faculty and staff ready to make the transition from downtown Cairo. Classes begin Sept 1.

Produced by Davar Iran Ardalan and Ned Wharton.

Related NPR Stories

• Sep. 6, 2007
  Climate Change: Changing the Margins
• Aug. 31, 2007
  Colleges Create Eco-Friendly Dorms
• May 4, 2008
  Global Warming Solutions for Egypt, U.S.
• April 20, 2008
  Egypt's Coptic Christians a Powerful Force

(In accordance with Title 17 U।S।C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers।

Why Don't We Sell Weapns ToThe People Who Attacked Us?

A Typical Bushite Idea.

Bush Keeps Israel Close, Saudi Arabia Closer

Del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Ma.gnolia
Newsvine
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Yahoo

Posted on Jul 31, 2007

By Robert Scheer

Go figure:

From the White House comes the news that self-styled anti-terrorism crusader George
Bush wants to sell $20 billion in high-tech military equipment to Saudi Arabia, the source of most of the financing, and 15 of the 19 hijackers, for the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks on the United States. The justification can’t be that this is yet another boondoggle for the military-industrial complex—the big winner in the war on terror—so we are told instead that the Sunni-dominated Saudi kingdom needs this weaponry to withstand a future challenge from those dastardly Shiite fellows in Iran.

Yes, the very same extremists whose surrogates are now, as a consequence of the U.S. invasion, pretending to be the indigenous government of Iraq. Recall that the Shiite militants who rule Tehran, along with the Sunni nuts around Osama bin Laden, were both the sworn enemy of Saddam Hussein. Now both of those forces are the main players, according to the Bush administration, vying for power in “liberated” Iraq, and our president is in the inane position of playing one group of fanatics against the other in the name of securing Iraq as a democratic haven.

White House officials told The New York Times that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates intend to use the occasion of their joint visit to Saudi Arabia “to press the Saudis to do more to help Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government.” Huh? Why in the world would the Sunnis, who control Saudi Arabia and are frightened to their bones of Shiites throughout the Gulf, be party to consolidating Shiite power in Iraq?

To complete the circle of madness, White House officials tell reporters that the hope of the latest arms sale program is that the Saudis will be so thrilled with their new weapons that they will stop funding the Sunni insurgents who are currently killing Americans. The absurdity of this position is that it makes the Saudis the big winners in the war on terror and yet expects them to cut out behavior that has played so effectively to the kingdom’s advantage. The nation which was most directly responsible for spawning the original al-Qaida attacks on the U.S., and which has since helped finance the violence in Iraq, is now being rewarded with a long-sought weapons modernization package. Thus, a new generation of deadly toys finds its way into the volatile Mideast.

Embarrassing facts undermining Bush’s insistence that Iraq is the key battleground in the war on terror are that al-Qaida, which was not allowed a presence in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, is now said by Bush to be behind the insurgency and that half of the foreign suicide bombers have been Saudi nationals. Why would the Saudis now move to stem the flow of terrorists across their border when Bush is rewarding them so handsomely for their past support of terrorism? After all, this administration has never demanded an accounting from the Saudis for the kingdom’s support of the Taliban government when it was coddling Saudi terrorist financer bin Laden. Nor has Bush’s camp ordered any serious examination of just how 15 Saudi “soldiers” were recruited, and provided with legitimate Saudi passports and American visas, to commit the mayhem for which the Iraqi people have been so severely punished.

While the $20-billion weapons package will no doubt be supported vigorously by lobbyists for a defense industry that stands to make a financial killing from the deal, it is expected to meet opposition in Congress, particularly from those who fear the impact of this new weaponry on the security of Israel. No problem—“senior officials” in the White House assured The New York Times that the Saudi arms package would be balanced with a $30.4-billion military aid package for Israel. Then, of course, some large amount of military “aid,” to the tune of $13 billion, will also have to be extended to Egypt to keep the dictator in Cairo on board.

What a deal! The Saudis pony up billions in cash, American taxpayers come up with an amount more than twice as high to keep the Israelis and Egyptians happy, and U.S. war profiteers, Bush’s most reliable core constituency group, make out like bandits. Hey, it’s only money, and the only real cost might be to folks who get caught in the line of fire of those weapons in wars to come for generations. But not to worry, most of them don’t vote in U.S. elections anyway.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.